Duchesses in Disguise

by Grace Burrowes

  Interesting. So Colonel Stratton was the third gentleman. Olivia had met him once or twice before, but Mary Alice knew the colonel and had something of an opinion about him. Things might prove interesting for her at least.

  They proceeded in silence for some minutes, following along after Sir Greyville and Francesca. Olivia supposed she and her friends would have quite a laugh at some point about their rescue by three single gentlemen when their purpose in leaving London had been to avoid single gentlemen, and, in particular, fortune hunters. Though these men were unlikely to be seeking wealthy brides, ensconced as they were deep in the Yorkshire countryside while the Season—and the marriage mart—played out in London.

  “What did you say your name was again, ma’am?”

  “Miss Olivia Thorpe.”

  “Of?”

  She was tempted to call on the haughtiness that was a duchess’s privilege and deliver a stinging set-down, but alas, there was the matter of being in disguise.

  “Fair Middling,” she said, giving the name of her childhood home, a rustic and wonderfully unimportant place that the Wastrel of White Horse Street was unlikely to know.

  He snorted dismissively. Fortunately, as a plain, sensible woman, she’d long ago discovered how much more satisfying it was to please herself rather than trying to impress men.

  “And where are you from, sir?”

  “My home is in London, though I foolishly agreed to rusticate here with Trenton and Stratton. But what can one do when old friends press?”

  “I value old friends more than anything, sir, and never consider their invitations a burden.”

  “Then you are a better fellow than I.”

  “Quite easy when I’m not a fellow at all.” What a ridiculous conversation she was having, riding a horse in far too close proximity to a stranger, who was taking her to the home of yet another stranger. Lydia had told her that Mr. Stirling was no longer welcome in certain respectable homes because of the low company he kept. Olivia had barely listened at the time, not being overly fond of gossip. But now she wished she had.

  “Do you scorn the male sex, then, Miss Thorpe?”

  His use of her maiden name jarred her. She had not been Miss Thorpe for ten years. For the first time, it struck her how eagerly, when Harold had proposed to her, she had abandoned her maiden name, along with everything else about herself that had felt old, dull, or just plain wrong. She had been twenty-four, a woman beginning to wonder if life would ever offer her a partner to complete her, and then she’d met Harold. He’d been her new beginning, her farewell to a life that had looked as though it would be very limited.

  “Not at all. I have three brothers who are extremely dear to me, and I am very fond of the husbands of my friends.”

  “But not too fond for the sake of propriety, one assumes?”

  Honestly! Was it his goal to be as coarse as possible?

  “I won’t dignify that with an answer, Mr. Stirling. Perhaps it would be better if we did not converse.”

  Mocking laughter greeted her words, but at least he said nothing further as they made their way to Rose Heath estate.

  * * *

  She smelled like nothing. No hint of floral soap wafted around her, no perfume lingered on the air, warmed by her skin. There was not even a whiff of lavender from her clothes, which Kit thought remarkable, considering that it seemed to be the goal of every laundress in the country to infuse all clothing with the scent of lavender. He did not care for lavender; it smelled sharp and reminded him of anise, which he detested.

  He and Miss Thorpe arrived just in time to see Grey and the first lady disappearing inside. Stratton and the third lady seemed to have disappeared, as there was no sign of them. It was as if he and his friends had already been paired off with the three women, a thought that annoyed Kit. He gestured for Miss Thorpe to precede him up the front steps and introduced her to Stratton’s housekeeper.

  “She is another of the ladies who were stranded on the road,” he told the housekeeper, “of whom I believe you have already met one. I believe Stratton is bringing the last of them. At least, I think she was the last of them, as no more ladies emerged from the coach.”

  “There were just the three of us,” Miss Thorpe supplied with that prim crinkling at the corner of her lips that was already becoming familiar.

  He could envision Miss Thorpe at home in her doubtless tidy, properly run household, with perhaps three or four cats in residence, and a neat sewing basket in every room. No poetry or wine-drinking for her, he thought with an inward smirk as he observed the set line of her mouth.

  With her neatly cut dark frock of good cloth and her simply styled, average brown hair (it reminded him of the color of autumn leaves once they’d lost their vivid reds and yellows) and her face that could only be called average as well, she was not the sort of woman who tempted him, never mind the stiffness he’d felt seize her when she’d come against him on the horse. She seemed to be entirely predictable and… average.

  “We are indebted to Colonel Stratton and his household for offering us shelter,” Miss Thorpe said politely. Of course; she was a polite, well-brought-up spinster. There were certainly enough of them in the country.

  Stratton’s housekeeper, an unflappable specimen of the sort generally found at country homes, nodded and said that hot baths and dinner trays had already been ordered for the ladies. As Kit took himself off upstairs, leaving the consummately dull Miss Thorpe to the housekeeper’s care, he could feel the lady’s eyes boring into the back of his coat, no doubt a reproach for so obviously abandoning her.

  He cursed quietly under his breath, wishing not for the first time that he hadn’t allowed Grey and Stratton to twist his arm into coming to the country. He’d regretted it from the first moments of arrival a few days before. It was too damned quiet in the country, which was why he rarely came.

  This was the trouble with friendship, particularly when it was very old friends: Affection clouded judgment. Theirs, in thinking he would be a good companion for them and that he would benefit from time in the country (he suspected they’d wished to spirit him away from “low company,” though they’d insisted they simply didn’t care for the Season). And his, in allowing himself to part from the noise and light and chatter of London, with its kissable women and tempting card tables, its overflowing cups of wine and its theaters and actresses and writers. He’d give anything for the arrival of even one greasy, moderately talented poet at Stratton’s too-quiet house.

  Though there was in truth a very compelling reason he had wished to leave London. His uncle, the Earl of Roswell, and his aunt Caroline and cousin Kate were coming to Town to celebrate Kate’s engagement to Viscount Overbee with a grand party. Kit knew this because, despite a decade and a half of estrangement between them, Kate had written to invite him to the party. He hadn’t heard from Kate, or indeed anyone in his uncle’s family, since he’d left years before. He preferred it that way.

  And now he and his friends were to play host to three proper-looking ladies, Miss Thorpe being the most proper-looking of all. There would be little chance of escaping the woman’s company entirely, since the miserable weather would make it a trial even to venture out to the pathetic cluster of buildings masquerading as the local village.

  He closed his bedchamber door with a clatter and stood briefly with his arms crossed, then rang for a dinner tray. When the maid arrived with the meal, she brought word that, due to some mishap, Stratton and his damsel would be stopping elsewhere on his estate for the night. Kit was not accustomed to dining alone—he preferred to have company at all times, if possible—but as Grey preferred to dine alone and work alone, clearly he would have no choice.

  With no conversation to share, Kit completed his meal in seven minutes, and he found himself at nine o’clock with not a blessed thing to do.

  He plucked a book from the desk and flipped idly through its pages, then tossed it down. When he realized that his fingers had begun picking at the wax that had
dripped down a candlestick, he made a sound of exasperation and left his room to prowl around the manor, where he encountered not a single person.

  Within twenty minutes, he found himself in the library, pulling books off the shelves and wondering if everyone else in the manor had already gone to sleep at this ridiculously early hour. Despite the addition of two ladies to the manor, it was as tomblike as ever in Stratton’s accursed house.

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  By ten o’clock that night, Olivia had had a hot bath and put on the same gown she’d been wearing that afternoon, which had been put by the fire to dry, because the ladies’ trunks had not yet arrived. She’d also eaten a delicious meal, which had been delivered to her bedchamber.

  Word had been sent that poor Mary Alice had been injured more than they’d thought when their coach had pitched into the ditch, and she would rest for the night at the home of one of Stratton’s tenants. Their damaged carriage would undoubtedly need significant attention.

  When she’d planned this holiday with Francesca and Mary Alice, Olivia had naturally assumed that the three of them would be spending most of the time together. But thanks to fate, she was now alone in a lovely room with every comfort and nothing expected of her for the foreseeable future, which would likely be several days.

  Olivia already suspected that Mary Alice and Francesca were going to be otherwise occupied while they were at Rose Heath. She didn’t need much imagination to guess that her friends might find this detour on their holiday rather interesting, what with the presence of Sir Greyville and Colonel Stratton. Her own rescuer, though, was a different story. Not that she felt it was the responsibility of others to entertain her.

  “Ohh,” she growled aloud. How she disliked being idle. “This is ridiculous.”

  She looked out the window of her bedchamber for the tenth time and for the tenth time saw nothing but darkness. She’d written two letters and made a small, rather pathetic sketch of the chamber (she had never been good at drawing), and now she was sitting before the looking glass and experimenting with a pot of blush that Francesca had pulled from her reticule in the coach and pressed on her, insisting she looked a bit pale.

  “There’s no harm in enhancing nature,” Francesca had said with a mischievous smile.

  Olivia had laughed. “If you enhanced the excessive beauty with which nature has already endowed you, it would surely cause some sort of earth-shaking natural calamity to occur. Birds falling from trees, a reverse in the tides—at the very least, every man within a hundred miles would be struck dumb.”

  “Pish,” Francesca had said. “And why talk this way, as if you are not lovely, when you are?”

  Dear Francesca, whose affection endowed her with generously impaired vision where her friends were concerned.

  “I’m perfectly happy not to be a pretty woman, since I’ve had years of observing what trouble it is for beauties to always have to discourage unwanted attention, and I hate to hurt people’s feelings.”

  “You are a duchess, Olivia! When will you cease thinking of yourself as the plain fourth daughter of a baronet?”

  “I’ve never minded being plain,” Olivia said. Which was true. She felt that what she lacked in looks, she made up for in intelligence.

  Francesca had made a sound of exasperation. “But you never were plain. And I think you know as well as I do that a woman is beautiful when she likes the way she is. Face paint is simply… fun. And maybe it helps you catch the eye of an interesting gentleman.”

  Olivia dabbed a smudge of the rouge on her cheeks, peered at the looking glass, and laughed at the idea of catching any man’s eye, an undertaking that would never be her strong suit, no matter what Francesca said.

  A woman is beautiful when she likes the way she is. Harold had made her feel loved and cherished and wanted. In a way, he had rescued her, because as the overlooked, plain, and aging fourth daughter in a family of eight children and two frequently feuding parents, she had spent years getting to know what life looked like from the edges of the dance floor.

  When the Duke of Coldbrook had chosen her, a near nobody, for his bride, it had been a minor sensation. True, he’d been nearly fifty and quite bald, and he was considered something of recluse, so it had been a very minor sensation. But Olivia hadn’t cared what anyone thought, because she had thought him wonderful. They’d been so happy together for those wonderful six years, until he died of a fever.

  Losing him had been terribly sad, but Olivia felt grateful to have known more of love than most people ever did. Yes, it was a lingering sorrow that they had not been blessed with children, but she had made peace with that.

  She swiped a fingertip of rouge across her lips, cocked her head, then frowned and reached for a handkerchief. What she looked like was a child’s painted doll, not a pleasing effect for a woman of thirty-four. Clearly, she was in need of distraction. She decided to go down to the library for a book before she did something truly silly, such as going up and down the corridors knocking on doors until she found Francesca’s room. Her friend was probably happily resting.

  The manor was remarkably quiet as she made her way along the corridor, though it was cheerfully aglow with a nearly profligate amount of lit sconces. Once downstairs, she opened the door to the library and was soon happily lost among the volumes.

  Some minutes later, she came to the end of a bookcase dedicated to volumes of history and gave a little gasp. Someone—some gentleman —was stretched out on the window seat with a book spread open over his face, as if to block the candlelight. Though she could not see his face, she nonetheless knew who he was, and she nearly groaned aloud in dismay. She’d had quite enough already of the thin pleasures of Mr. Kit Stirling’s company.

  She turned to leave, soundlessly she thought, but a voice arrested her.

  “Well, Miss Thorpe. Come to relieve the boredom of this tomb of a house, have you?”

  * * *

  Thorpe. Was there a duller, less elegant name? Snodgrass, Kit supposed, as he regarded her from where he reclined on the window seat, propped on his elbows. Still, Thorpe, with its orp sound reminiscent of belches, inspired no thoughts of lazy afternoon trysts of the sort he preferred. It seemed fitting, as Miss Thorpe wasn’t pretty anyway.

  She had nice eyes, he would allow, of a hazel shade, but her eyebrows were much too thick and dark. Someone ought to have shown her how to do something about them by now. She was surely well into her thirties.

  He crossed his legs lazily and was treated to a flicker of one of those fierce eyebrows. That house full of cats he’d imagined for her came to mind, and he mentally added yet another feline. She had five cats, he decided, and she liked a single plain boiled egg in the morning with no salt, and very scantly buttered toast. She lived alone with one old servant woman and passed her time figuring economies for her household and doing charitable works in the neighborhood. He was undecided yet on whether she permitted herself to gossip, but he was leaning toward not.

  The vision of her as a solitary spinster did not exactly align with the fact that she’d been traveling with two female friends, but he decided this was her once-a-year holiday with old friends. A trip for which she—

  “I find that boredom speaks more of the person than his or her environment,” she said in reply to his greeting.

  He was well aware that he was very lucky to still be able to count on the good will of Grey and Stratton, his two oldest friends, but that did not mean he was taking this enforced country holiday with good grace. He was rather a lost cause, though they could not seem to accept that.

  He chuckled. He generally had a great deal of success with chuckling, where women were concerned, though Miss Thorpe looked immune. Of course, from the first, he’d not set out to charm her.

  “Perfectly calibrated to put me in my place, Miss Thorpe. Tell me, ma’am, do you like cats?”

  Those remarkable eyebrows drew together. “Cats? Yes, certainly. I find them charming.” She glanced aroun
d. “Is there a cat about in the library?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed. I was just thinking about cats. And how they make fine companions.”

  A few seconds of silence passed. And then one of those inky caterpillars above her eyes arched, slowly, a movement that spoke of... arrogance? Surely not. What could this plain, spinsterish woman have to be arrogant about?

  “Do you wish to imply that a single woman of my age must particularly value the company of cats?”

  He swung his legs to the floor and stood. “That would be most ill-mannered of me.”

  “Would that stop you?”

  “Probably not.”

  She nodded, clearly prepared to think the worst of him. “I am not unacquainted with your existence, Mr. Stirling. I read the London papers. And more significantly, my friend Lydia Woodson has told me of her nephew losing his year’s allowance to you in a card game at your home.”

  “It is no secret that I earn my keep through cards. No one made him come to the card table.”

  “No,” she agreed. “But a gentleman would decline to fleece such a young man. He’s but seventeen.”

  “Then I hope for his sake that he learned his lesson.”

  “On that we are agreed.”

  He propped one shoulder against the wall behind him. “And that he ought to avoid my company in the future?”

  “It is you who has said it.”

  “But you agree?”

  Her eyes traveled over his face and briefly flicked toward his shoulders and chest. Not a sexual appraisal, which he’d certainly experienced many times before. No, it was more in the nature of a general dismissal.

  “I think it is wise to choose one’s companions with thought and care,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Stirling, it’s late and I must return to my bedchamber.”

  She was about to go, and he ought to be glad, as she clearly did not like him. He didn’t like her either, but that was irrelevant. She would be someone to talk to, and in his experience, any companion was better than none.